The Magical Dynamics of the Shopping Mall

For the residents of Ankara, it is possible to draw the architectural typology of the shopping mall: the shopping mall is a huge building that consists of three or four storey. The first two floors are separated for wearing stores and the upper floor consists of food court, book store, and cinema. The huge size of the shopping mall’s building and the vast parking area in front of the building are seen as the most distinctive features of the shopping mall that separates it from the other buildings in the city. Even if one has never been to a shopping mall these features of the shopping mall architecture are learned

through media. However, more than the architectural feature, the magical restaurant. For example, you say that a restaurant is a place where you eat something.

The difference of the shopping mall is that you cannot say any specific activity to do in the mall. You can do everything in the shopping mall (65, M, MC¹⁶).

In this magical atmosphere of the shopping malls, a new kind of social life comes into existence in which, as Helten and Fischer (2003) argues, security is one of the most alluring aspects. The informants emphasize that they walk around comfortably in the shopping malls without controlling their pockets because of the low possibility of purse-snatching: after police stations malls are described as the second most secure place in the city. The trust based social relations, however, does not spring from the character of social relations; it is rather a result of security system. The panoptic feature of the shopping malls seems to create trust in the social relations. The roots of the trust, however, are not social. Even though it seems paradoxical, the trust in the social life of the shopping malls is related to being watched and being controlled. Therefore, the trust in the mall is not due to the people but to the security system. The trust issue in the social relations of the urban life, which Jane Jacobs (see Jacobs, 1969) had dealt with years ago, seems to be solved in the shopping malls; because, people are not as much anonymous as they are in the urban public spaces. Therefore, the description of the mall visitors as

“decent people” is related with spatial security technologies. The visitors of the mall are regarded decent not only because they have relatively high

16 LC: Lower Class MC: Middle Class UC: Upper Class

social, economic and cultural capitals; even in the opposite condition, visitors are regarded as decent because it is thought that regardless of the degree of capitals one has, mall transforms people into decent ones. Regardless of income, age and gender variables, the security aspect of the shopping mall atmosphere and the decent aspect of the visitors are emphasized by all informants. While male informants exemplify the decent character of the social relations in the shopping mall with the absence of the danger of purse-snatching, women emphasize the absence of disturbing man gaze on women:

The shopping mall is one of the rare places in which you can walk around comfortably.

If you go to Saman Pazarı you have to pay attention to your wallet. But in the shopping mall you can care with your wife and children more than your wallet (45, M, LC).

While walking around Kızılay I feel disturbed. All the men stare at me as if they will immediately attack. But the shopping mall is a modern space and the visitors are decent (34, F, UC).

As the capital of Turkey, Ankara is seen as a bureaucratic city which is incapable of satisfying the expectations of the residents. Most of the informants say that Ankara is a relatively new city, which lacks an entrenched culture and natural beauty. While talking about urban life, most of the people complain about the lack of alternatives in the city. Under such circumstances, the shopping malls are seen as an oasis at the middle of a desert. In defining the city life in Ankara; Kızılay, Tunalı Hilmi Street, Bahçeli, and Ulus are given primary significance. However, although these given districts of the city are the heart of urban life, the deteriorating conditions of them are the main subject of the residents’ complaints from the city. These given public spaces are seen under the invasion of the groups that are identified with crime. Therefore, the urban public spaces are insecure with an endless hubbub. The traffic, noise, crowd and dirtiness of the public spaces are also among the most emphasized factors that push people from these spaces. In addition, there are some unsocial factors in this process, as

well. Weather conditions and time of the day are very affective in arranging activities in the public spaces. Walking around the city in hot and cold weathers is seen unhealthy; on the other hand, being out at late hours is thought to be dangerous. As a result, public spaces are to be escaped and the ties between these spaces and people are decreased to a functional level.

The address of this escape is most of the time a shopping mall. Going to a shopping mall creates the simulation of walking around the city that refined from its problems. The design of the mall most of the time imitates the urban public spaces. In the shopping malls, the activities of the urban public spaces are presented in a street-like atmosphere. The atmosphere in the mall is pure, free of danger and disturbance (Southworth, 2005: 151; Backes, 1997: 3). The security guards at the gates, cameras in every corner, the orderly design and stainless cleanness prevent a possible deviance in the mall. The absence of socially disadvantaged groups, such as beggars, prevents a possible distraction. Shopping malls are rationally planned to make visitors think only about shopping (Gottdiener, 2005). Even the weather and time are rationally controlled in the mall. The air-conditioned environment and lighting system creates a space that is not affected from the linear movement of time and nature (Ritzer, 2000).

The shopping malls as the address of escape from the city are not wholeheartedly welcome. Residents of Ankara long for open air activities.

They live a paradox between the desire and practice of how to spend leisure time in the city. Most of the informants express that they prefer open-air activities but they immediately add that they can rarely do that. The shopping malls in Ankara seem to create various questions in the minds of the residents. On the one hand, while the new spaces of social change are consumed more, on the other hand, the less consumed spaces are romanticized. While people do enjoy the time they spend in the shopping malls, they often mention the good old days on the urban public places such

as the streets and squares. While, on the one hand, shopping malls are seen as a part of Turkey’s Westernization process and articulation with the global world, on the other hand they are approached with caution. This springs from the fear of over-consumption and of losing the traditional type of socialization that was established in the urban public spaces. Especially for the older generations who grew up in a protectionist economy, shopping malls signify excessive consumption. As the economy of the country has so many problems, they see the investment in the shopping malls as a waste.

According to them, the economic sources should be invested in production to accelerate the economic development of the country. In this rationale, while factories provide opportunities for employment and for increasing savings, the shopping malls are seen as traps that waste the productive resources.

Moreover, some of the informants think negatively about the foreign shareholders of the shopping malls. They blame foreign shareholders to make profit from the local sources, hence draining the surplus created in domestic business.

The skeptic attitudes towards shopping malls do not, however, prevent people from visiting the malls. The general tendency is to identify the shopping mall with Westernization and modernization processes. The positive attitudes towards shopping malls lie in the everyday life experiences of individuals. Shopping malls are perceived as enchanted spaces of a disenchanted city. The huge size of the mall, the juxtaposition of a multitude of goods and activities, the extravagant design of space, the lightning system and the endless variety of commodities are the major factors that mesmerize the visitors. The image of walking around in the shopping mall is like being Alice in the wonderland.

For most of the residents of Ankara, shopping malls were not familiar spaces only twenty years ago. Therefore, malls are still the new parts of the city.

What is new about the shopping malls is not only about the abundance of

goods, but rather, their style of presentation. Malls remove the strict boundaries between different activities and spaces juxtaposing everything in an unfamiliar manner (Nelson, 1998). In the past, occupational specialization coincided with a designated space such as a specialized store: butchers, green-grocers, tailors, bakers, manufacturers would work independently from each other. Malls collect everything that plays a role in the economy of the city under one roof. Such juxtaposition of unrelated activities and places makes the mall almost like a magical place. Most of the informants say that they thought they were in a dream when they first visited a shopping mall.

To see the garden tools and different kinds of bread sold in the same place was previously unimaginable. The extreme variety of commodities and services in the mall is another source of enchantment. This feature of the mall transforms it into a material culture museum in the everyday life of the city.

As if they are looking at the objects that are protected in a glass sphere, people walk around the mall looking at the new commodities behind the window. The main difference between museums and the shopping malls is the inversion of what is worth to see in the shopping malls. Also, the activities have different meanings. The museum is identified with high cultures but visiting a mall, that is, “museum of the new”, is part of everyday life of the city. A similar dynamic can be seen in the coincidence of luxury and ordinary in the shopping malls, hence amalgamating high culture and popular culture. Malls are extraordinary places but ordinary parts of the urban life. They, however, transform daily life into a fablesque environment at the same time. As a young professional says malls open doors to a dreamland that pass through ordinary life using the ways that ordinary people use everyday:

Whenever I find myself at the entrance of ANKAmall, I feel as if I am entering in an ultra-luxury hotel, as if I am in the Hilton. This place is like a huge palace with its pleasant and bright luxury environment where you can easily reach by just using subway. (27, F, MC)

Up until now, I tried to explain the general features of “magic” of the mall. In the following section, I try to show the different magical attributes of the mall for the different social positions.

3.2. The Fragmented Magic of the Shopping Malls

Other than these general features that transform the mall into an enchanted space, there are a number of reasons that make the mall a magical aspect of city life. The magical aspects of the shopping mall change with regard to income group, gender, and age variables. For lower income informants who mainly live in the gecekondu areas of the city, going to the mall is a touristic journey. For them, visiting the shopping mall is not similar to loitering in the urban public spaces. It is a special activity that requires caring more about their physical appearance. This attitude might be related with the purpose of going to the mall. For the lower income groups, going to the shopping mall is a respectable leisure activity. For them, the shopping mall is not that much related with shopping. Shopping in the mall is a dream which exceeds the family budget. Stimuli spreading from the stores create an atmosphere that is preponderated by the shopping messages. This atmosphere creates double effects for lower income groups: consciousness of incapability and daydreaming. The messages spreading from the stores call visitors to purchase the goods that are exhibited behind the windows as if these goods magically keep the meaning of life. For the lower income groups, however, loitering in the passages of the mall reminds them of their economic incapability. This reproduction of the consciousness of economic incapability is one of the reasons why lower income groups visit the mall rarely. As a young worker expresses; if they had more money they would visit the mall more:

Actually, I would like to visit the mall more. But when we come here as a family, I have to pay at least for the food which is something I cannot afford. But if my salary were higher I would visit the mall more frequently (28, M, LC).

On the other hand, the endless shopping stimuli in the shopping mall engender daydreaming. It would be expected that the unreplied shopping stimuli to create a blasé attitude in the visitors (see Simmel, 1950) but it seems that these stimuli are not the source of disturbance, but rather the source of daydreaming. What is dreamed in front of the store windows is the future upper social mobility, having a better life by means of the goods.

Therefore, while on the one hand the shopping mall experience reproduces the disadvantaged position of the visitor in the economic structure, on the other hand it creates a hopeful future dream as an escape from the pains of reality. The daydreaming in the shopping mall as a compensation of the relative deprivation can be seen in the following expressions of a young security guard:

While shopping around the stores, I start dreaming. You inevitably dream about what you don’t have. I ask myself whether I can have them, and whether I can have a better future (25, M, LC).

Above, going to the shopping mall was described as a respectable leisure activity for the lower income groups. This respectable attribute of the activity is related with sharing the same place with the people from high culture. The relatively democratic aspect of the quasi-public space of the shopping malls creates a new meeting point for different groups in the city life. Following the establishment of the republic, the public space was identified with the elite culture (Erkip, 2003). Participating to the public space required knowledge and interest about the cultures of modernity such as theatre, dance, and opera. It has inevitably spatially segregated the groups with high cultural capital and lower cultural capital by decreasing the encounter with the others to the lowest degree (ibid.). The shopping malls seem to annihilate this spatial segregation by gathering different groups under its roof. The common point in this meeting is not citizenship but being consumer. As consumers, both income groups gather in the quasi public space of the shopping mall. In this relatively more democratic structure of the

quasi-public space of the shopping malls, in order to keep up with the luxury decoration and the middle and upper middle class majority of the visitors, the body of the poor is reshaped, aestheticized. Thus, the care with the physical appearance does not only spring from going out of the home but also from contacting with people of high culture. The impact of going to the mall on the body of the poor can be seen in the following expressions of a young worker:

For me, going to the mall is like appearing on the TV screen. I sometimes see TV stars, singers in the mall. I may even run into the prime minister in the mall. Therefore I care for my physical appearance; at least, I don’t come without wearing make up (28, F, LC).

Although the youth of gecekondu areas see malls as part of their social life in the city, the older generations equate going to the mall with a thriftless activity, that is, a waste of money. For the youth of gecekondu areas, their parents are strangers of shopping malls. When they visit shopping malls, they are uncomfortable. The fear of being unable to keep up with the other visitors seems to create shyness which is the main source of uneasiness that older generations of lower income visitors live in shopping malls. The traces of this pressure can be found in the following expressions of informants:

There are differences between me and my parents in terms of our social lives. For example, my parents do not visit the shopping mall. They have rarely been to these places. They fear from the security measures and the shopping mall environment. (23, M, LC).

My father gets angry when I visit the shopping malls. He thinks that malls are not places for us: they are for the wealthy people. Their styles of dressing and speaking and their tastes are different from us according to my father. (34, M, LC).

While explaining the flexible structure of the contemporary capitalism, Richard Sennett (2002) argues that the innovations of information technology makes older generations disadvantaged in the services sector against youth.

In a similar way, shopping malls as the center of global life-styles are visited

more by the youth who can more easily follow the rapid changes in life-styles. In consumer capitalism, identities are fluid. For the older generations who want to maintain their consistent identity, consumer capitalism is an alien culture. Even when they visit the shopping malls, they are passive in their behaviors, almost like excluded. In the luxurious and aesthetic environment of the shopping mall, even if their entry is not prevented by gate guards, they feel themselves restricted. This can be seen as passive social exclusion as it is not implemented by the policy makers of the shopping malls. What alienates the older generations of rural migrants is habitually unfamiliar environment of the shopping malls. It should not be forgotten, however, that shopping malls are just one of the spaces in which passive social exclusion can be seen. Following Bourdieu (1984), we can argue that passive social exclusion can be seen to drive out of one’s own habitus.

For the lower income youngsters, however, shopping malls provide new type of encounters with modernity. Spending most of the time at home which is identified with tradition young generations make a sharp distinction between their leisure time in the mall and their family life. Thus, for them shopping malls are the places where they escape from the traditional to the modern. The shopping malls also provide them a place of

For the lower income youngsters, however, shopping malls provide new type of encounters with modernity. Spending most of the time at home which is identified with tradition young generations make a sharp distinction between their leisure time in the mall and their family life. Thus, for them shopping malls are the places where they escape from the traditional to the modern. The shopping malls also provide them a place of